توسعه مالی، انتشار ICT و رشد اقتصادی: درسهایی از منطقه خاورمیانه و شمال آفریقا

This paper aims to test jointly two economic puzzles: the effect of financial development and Information and Communication Technology (ICT) on economic growth. Theories predict a positive effect of financial development and ICT on growth but empirical studies on these relationships produced mixed results. Further, we investigate the interaction between financial development and ICT Diffusion to test whether the impact of financial development on growth is strengthened by better ICT infrastructure. In this paper we assess empirically these relationships in some MENA countries. The empirical study is based on estimation of a dynamic panel model with system GMM estimators. There are three main findings. First, our empirical results join empirical literature that find a negative direct effect of financial development on economic growth. This ambiguous relationship may be linked to many phenomenons but there are not yet clear explanations of this puzzle. Second, the estimates reveal a positive and significant direct effect of ICT proxies on economic growth. This implies that MENA countries need to reinforce their ICT policies and improve using of new Information and Communication Technology. Finally, the interaction between ICT penetration and financial development is found positive and significant in the growth regression. This implies that economies in Mena region can benefit from financial development only once a threshold of ICT development is reached.

Within the broader debate over the increasing importance of financial development as a key driver of economic growth, yet, very few empirical works has been conducted on the interaction between financial development and ICT diffusion on developing countries. Many theoretical studies have highlighted the positive effect of financial development and ICT diffusion on economic growth. However, the recent empirical literature on the issue produced ambiguous results, especially in Mena countries, where little agreement has so far been attained about the evidence in favor of a strong FD-Growth and ICT-Growth relationships.1 The debate about these two puzzles is continuously updated. While there are some empirical findings on, these issues, there are not much attempt to focus on the interaction between financial development and ICT diffusion and to find a threshold effect which may adversely affect economic growth. The presence of a threshold is an important finding in studying the FD-Growth nexus, since it prevents the economy to raise sufficient initial capital and ICT penetration. The aim of this paper is to fall this gap and to investigate whether the impact of financial development on growth is strengthened by better ICT infrastructure. The development of ICT infrastructure consolidates the impact of financial development on economic growth by reducing market imperfections and promoting financial functions: the ICT diffusion reduces the main market frictions which are information and transaction costs. The development of ICT infrastructure eases monitoring managers and exerting corporate control which are an important function of financial intermediaries among the five functions provided by Levine (1997). Besides, a good ICT infrastructure reduces information asymmetries and price volatility; and increase responsiveness of fishing businesses. According to Levine (1997), the financial development boosts economic growth mainly through two channels: capital accumulation and technological innovation; so obviously the rapid diffusion of ICT plays as one key driver of economic development through the technological innovation channel since it contribute to innovation and to the development of new products and processes. This paper is intended to examine jointly finance-growth nexus and ICT-growth nexus and to investigate whether the interaction between ICT diffusion and financial development facilitates economic growth. We use system GMM estimators of dynamic panel on cross-sectional data of 17 Mena countries during the period 1960–2009. The paper is organized as follows. Section 2 provides a brief literature review on ICT, financial development and growth. Section 3 presents the data, the econometric methodology and Empirical Results. Section 3 concludes.

This paper studies jointly the finance-growth nexus and ICT-growth nexus in a sample of Mena countries from 1960–2009. Using a standard growth model and a system GMM estimator, our findings are in line with previous studies (Ben Naceur and Ghazouani, 2007 and Barajas et al., 2011), and confirm that, in the MENA countries, the direct effect of financial development on economic growth is significantly negative. Our results reveal that the interaction term of between financial development and ICT penetration is significantly positive which proves that economies in Mena region can benefit from financial development only once a threshold of ICT development is reached. This implies that Mena countries need to reinforce ICT infrastructure develop e-finance in the region since it is a part of e-commerce, having its own unique characteristics such as convenience, price transparency, broader access to information and lower costs. In addition, ICT diffusion has a positive impact on growth, along with trade openness. This finding indicates that in MENA countries promotion of ICT Penetration strongly contributed in enhancing growth. MENA countries need to reinforce their ICT policies and improve using of new Information and Communication Technology and engaging skilled workers. Besides, the evidence of the role of internet in Mena countries suggests that need to focus on promoting the e-government and the e-commerce in the region. Hence, Mena countries need to promote ICT sector and exploit opportunities for leapfrogging even with weak financial system. On the other side, government consumption and inflation should be contained in the long-term to avoid their negative impact on growth.